NJ DOT commissioner James Simpson (left) and Andrew Tunnard, Director of Operations Support for DOT, surveys the homes along Rt. 35 in Brick damaged in the storm. / Bob Bielk/Staff photographer

NJ DOT Commissioner James Simpson surveys the damage to shore communities. Steel bulkheading, driven deep into the ground in front of the Mantoloking bridge, lines Rt. 35. Its purpose is to prevent a future washout of the land at the foot of the bridge. / Bob Bielk/Staff photographer

BY THE NUMBERS

For Route 35 to be reopened, the DOT and contractor crews had to accomplish the following: • Remove mountains of debris-laden sand from the highway, some of which were 10 feet deep. • Remove 89 vehicles and 25 boats from the highway. • Remove 27 buildings. • Repair washed-out sections of roadway, the longest being 200 feet. • Initial estimates for up to 8,000 dump truck loads to cart out debris from Route 35 to landfills are about $4.5 million. Scan this QR code for a photo gallery.

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MANTOLOKING — The “Miracle on 34th Street” has nothing on the miracle of Route 35.

Right after superstorm Sandy, engineers looked at the massive breach connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay, where Route 35 had been. They told Andrew Tunnard, state Department of Transportation director of operations support, that it would take several months to fill in and make ready for traffic.

As it turned out, Tuesday morning — less than two months after Sandy punched a 400-foot-wide hole through the barrier island — drivers were traveling over new asphalt to the Mantoloking Bridge. A wall of steel sheeting and a large sand berm again separated bay and ocean, as contractors hustled to finish the job.

If restoring a washed-out portion of Interstate 287 after Hurricane Irene was an amazing feat, then officials say what the DOT did to reopen Route 35 on the barrier island may be the ultimate transportation miracle.

“The miracle on 287 was a warm-up for here,” Tunnard said.

It was anything but simple, though.

DOT and contractor crews had to move mountains of debris-laden sand from the highway, some of which were 10 feet high. They had to remove 89 vehicles and 25 boats, as well as 27 buildings. They had to repair washed-out sections of road, the longest being 200 feet.

“When it started, it was us and law enforcement,” Tunnard said about when crews arrived on Nov. 2. “We were here to recreate mobility. We were step one of recovery.”

Even the grim job of searching homes for victims of Sandy couldn’t start until DOT got to work.

“We had to clear the roads so search and rescue could get in,” said Richard M. Shaw, assistant DOT commissioner of operations. “You couldn’t drive anywhere — the sand was several inches to several feet (on Route 35).”

During a tour Tuesday, the state highway was down to blacktop again, allowing utility crews to get in and work and letting residents return home to assess damage and begin rebuilding. Construction work in Mantoloking is expected to be officially complete next week.

Like a military operation, DOT and contractor crews attacked Route 35, starting from Point Pleasant to the north while another crew worked from the south in Seaside, Shaw said. A separate operation was tasked with repairing the Mantoloking breach.

“Your first reaction is: ‘This is impassable, how are we going to get started?’ ” Tunnard said. “We kept banging away at it.”

Even finding the roadway was a challenge. Street signs were blown away and GPS had to be used to tell crews where they were, Simpson said.

Crews worked on the southbound lanes of Route 35, which are separated from the northbound lanes. The northbound lanes are closer to the ocean and sustained more damage and debris. The southbound lanes were temporarily made northbound and southbound, for travel purposes, while the tougher job of clearing the northbound lanes was tackled.

By Nov. 4, two lanes of Route 35 were open.

Many of the 80 washouts on Route 35 occurred where lagoons from Barnegat Bay come close to the road, Tunnard said, with the worst being a 200-foot stretch in Lavallette. Steel sheeting was driven into the ground and the subsurface of the road was backfilled before new asphalt could be poured.

Tougher conditions awaited at the Mantoloking bridge, where the approach from the island was completely washed out.

“When we got here, you could have gone swimming. You could put boats in the water,” Simpson said of the breach, pointing to a house that was an island surrounded by water.

Sanddrifts on Route 35 were even higher, reaching 8 to 10 feet. Three contractor crews were called on to attack the job from the foot of the bridge onto Route 35 North. One crew came in on local roads through Lavallette, Shaw said.

Initial estimates said it would take until the end of December just to get Route 35 cleaned and reopened. Instead, it took three to four weeks to get the road to the bridge approach rebuilt.

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Contractor IEW Construction Group provided 250 workers and 100 pieces of equipment, most of which were deployed in closing the breach and rebuilding the road between Route 35 and the bridge, Simpson said.

A fleet of 80 to 90 dump trucks brought in stone fill and screened sand from the highway cleanup to fill the breach, in an operation that ran 24 hours a day, Simpson said.

Just filling in the breach took close to three days, Shaw said.

“In my 28 years with DOT, this is the largest, highest-profile emergency job I’ve ever been on,” Shaw said.

A similar operation was done in Monmouth County to remove what was, on average, 6 feet of sand from Route 36 in Sea Bright, Simpson said.

Hurricane Irene and even hurricane drill exercises the DOT did in conjunction with State Police didn’t prepare officials for the depths of sand they encountered on the road.

“We didn’t have the wind and the effect of ocean waves with Irene,” Shaw said. “Here, the sand was worse. Sand was a good 8 to 10 feet high — we couldn’t move. There was debris and cars, you couldn’t imagine the way it looked.”

Replacing the new “inlet” from the ocean side is a high mountain of sand and a 500-foot-long wall of steel sheeting driven 42 feet into the ground.

“This is what the Army Corps of Engineers wanted. It will hold if there is another storm,” Simpson said.

Simpson credits the DOT’s experience with rebuilding the washed-out lane of I-287 in Morris County for providing a management blueprint for a “do it now” philosophy in dealing with disaster.

“We knew what was needed to get the road back — we did 48 hours of work in 24,” he said.

Part of what allowed the DOT to move so fast was having contracts with construction companies in place prior to the storm, Simpson said.

The remains of the job are expansive, from a massive mountain of cleaned sand at Ortley Beach being used to replenish what Sandy took from beaches, to waterlogged cars, trucks and boats that remain at Chandler Field in Lavallette.

Reopening Route 35 happened so rapidly that local officials didn’t expect it, and asked DOT to temporarily lower speed limits on the highway during the recovery, Tunnard said.

Residents such as Joe Bruno of Caldwell are now able to get in and start working on their storm-damaged homes. “They didn’t let us in for four weeks — once we got in, it was better than what it is now,” Bruno said Tuesday at his summer home in Ocean Beach, Toms River.

Others are honoring the DOT’s efforts. Toms River officials wrote a letter of commendation to DOT, and the Ocean County freeholders plan to pass a resolution honoring DOT’s efforts.

“This has been the disaster administration,” Simpson joked, referring to the major bizzard of 2011, Hurricane Irene, the Halloween snowstorm of 2011 and, ultimately, Sandy.